Idk if anyone else has been following the Bricks and Minifigs fiasco but it is an insane example of how corruption and fraud can be weaponized against average people by sociopathic corporations and immoral corrupt police departments.
Tldr: an enfeebled 80 year old man had a consignment contract with a Bricks and Minifigs franchise in Salem, Oregon for the most valuable Star Wars Lego collection valued around $200,000. Corporate BAM (Bricks and Minifigs) enacted a hostile takeover with the original franchiser, told the son of the Lego owner who was facilitating the consignment that they had no idea what they were talking about (despite having an INSANE amount of legal evidence), and essentially stole his entire collection he spent his life collecting. Losing all hope after being threatened by the new franchise owner to be bankrupted in court, the son reached out to YouTuber Reckless Ben for help. Reckless Ben used every legal ‘loophole’ to help this man & son get their rightfully owed collection back, and at every step of the way, BAM corporate & the franchisers militarized the police to harrass, impede justice, and protect this insane criminal and corporation in a scheme that goes WAY deeper than just a man having his collection stolen by a multi-million dollar company.
If you're thinking "I don't care about legos" or "it's just a YouTuber trying to make content" - you NEED to move past that because this is one of the craziest mass corruption scandals I've seen in years and it keeps getting worse by the day. Ben & his team has been repeatedly harassed, physically assaulted by the police, purposely put in precarious situations by the police & company in order to have him arrested, falsified criminal complaints made against Ben such as heroin possession & stolen property, his Airbnb raided, guns drawn on them, their First Amendment rights trampled on, and justice being impeded in several ways that keeps growing almost hour by hour. All while the real criminals, which the list is now growing to include the police, have gotten away with it & protected, likely through the will of the Mormon church (BAM corporate and the franchisers live in American Fork, Utah).
Police footage has been released or leaked showing that this is all an inside job. BAM has not provided any evidence saying that Ben, the original owner of the set, the original franchisee who wrote up the consignment agreement (who is helping Ben & Co.), are lying. Reckless Ben has a mountain of evidence refuting BAM’s claims of lying. All the while, as has been presented, Ben has followed every law (albeit theatrically but that’s engineered). At the end of the day, Ben just wants these Legos returned to the rightful owner. That’s it.
It should scare everyone that this is happening, because this is so normalized in the United States that I can safely say that there are hundred if not thousands of other similar scenarios happening right now to innocent people being crushed and silenced by corporations militarizing police forces to prevent being held accountable. Not only that, but they are counting on us not paying attention or getting bored in order to get away with these crimes.
I highly recommend you go and watch Reckless Ben’s videos on the situation, which again is unfolding in real time. But I really like Charlie’s take on this situation because he highlights the much greater fear that everyone should be experiencing
